Keith walked back to the station and went in the waiting-room, where he sat down. His heart felt as heavy as lead. He had burned all his bridges behind him, and it made his soul sick to contemplate the long vista of the coming years. As he sat there, the coward hope that she--Gloria--might not come, shot up in his heart, trying to make of him a traitor. He said to himself: “If----if----” Presently he heard the train whistle. He got up and went to the door. He felt he was choking. Daylight was coming fast; day-dawn in the eastern sky. The town, rain-cleansed and freshened, would soon awake and lift its face to the greeting of another morn. The ticket-office window was shoved up. It was nearing train time. “Hello, Mr. Keith, going away?” “Yes, I want a----” he hesitated. “Where to?” But Keith did not answer. A ticket? One, or two? If she should not come---- Was Fate----? What was he to do? But, no! Yet he hesitated, while the man at the window waited his reply. Two tickets, or only one? Or not any? Nay, but he must go; and there must be two. Then the train thundered into the station, and almost at the same moment he heard, through the sound made by the clanging bell, the rustle of a woman’s rich garments. He turned. Gloria Howard stood there, beautiful and eager, panting from her hurried walk. “Where to?” repeated the man at the window. “San Francisco--two tickets,” said Keith. “‘Two,’ did you say?” asked the man, looking up quickly at him and then glancing sideways at the radiant, laughing woman who had taken her place so confidently at Keith’s side. Keith’s voice did not falter, nor did his eyes fall: “Two.” But the telegraph operator smiled to himself as he shoved the tickets across the window sill. To him, Keith was simply “Another one!” So, too, would the world judge him after he was gone. * * * * * Bayard Keith was no saint; but as he crossed to the cars in the waxing light of day-dawn, his countenance was transfigured by an indescribable look we do not expect to see--ever--on the face of mortal man. “For her dear sake!” he whispered softly to himself, as he looked away to the reddening East--to the eastward where “she” was. “For the sake of the woman I love.” And “greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.” [Illustration] IN NANNA’S PALM It all happened years ago. Before there was any railroad; even before there were any overland stages crossing the plains. Only the emigrant teams winding slowly down the valley on the road stretching westward. Some there were, though, that had worked their way back from the Western sea, to stop at those Nevada cañons where there was silver to be had for the delving.